We All Bleed
by Romanec
Summary: No longer a one-shot. One drink, but one drink too many. Eiri forgets. "Shuichi."
1. Bleed

**Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation. Maki Murakami does.**

**A/N: Just something. **

**Rating: T for implications and content.**

* * *

**We All Bleed**

A justifiable mistake, but an unjustifiable time to commit it. Flaws were found and broken and adored, twisted beyond recognition into something even more vile and disgusting, bubbling like an infected wound that was far more painful than amputation. But amputation it was -- amputation of feeling, of emotion that wasn't carnal. Amputation of any sense of affection or endearment. Amputation that lead to the prosthetic that was lust. Lust, instead of love. That almost came out poetic.

He thrust his door open with a violent kick, knowing exactly where to hit it so that he wouldn't have to use a key. So that his hands did not have to move away from the pliant flesh quivering beneath his touch, so that his lips did not have to break away from the supple ones they were attached to. The heat that roared through his body as he stumbled backwards, becoming encased in the darkness of his apartment, was both torturous and arousing. And though it was not often that he lost control like this ... now, he could not help himself.

He pulled other with him, bitter humor flooding his mind as they both stumbled into the thick, tense air, anger of no source tapping his mind as the other kicked the door shut in the same manner that he had opened it. But the anger was quickly abandoned in place of a moan he had to force back as the other arched forward, brushing their weight together for the first time.

His head was spinning, and everything was a little more fuzzy than it should be. He hadn't had much, but maybe that one drink had not been such a wonderful idea.

"You're so beautiful."

Or maybe it had. He didn't like the term beautiful, especially not murmured in the heat of lust, but their bodies were against each other again, and he forgot.

Forgot. Forgetting something? What? This had been done, so many times before. So many times ... forgetting. He was forgetting.

"Yuki."

And his eyes shot open, a hazy amber that was fighting hard to return to its sharp glare. Looking over the shoulder of the other man, now frozen against him, to lock with horrified, defeated eyes of loving lilac. Eyes that closed briefly, before disappearing all together as the lithe body of his lover disappeared from the arch of the door he had just abused.

"Shuichi." He had forgotten.

The other man, confused, pulled away.

* * *

**Again, I may continue. But let me know what you thought, regardless. :)**


	2. Lie

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation. Maki Murakami does.**_

**A/N: Eh. Guess I continued it. :)**

**Rating: T for implications, content, and language.**

* * *

**We All Lie**

"I just don't understand."

A justifiable mistake, or so he had believed. A horrible time to commit it, justifiable or not, when one had, unwillingly or not, committed to a relationship. God, but it had felt wonderful to forget, if only for a moment, the reality that inundated his soul. To forget about identity, responsibility, demons, and life. To spin tales made only for the twisted fables his sick mind erected when it destroyed the happiness of fantasy. What was so callously torn off could still, in fact, be sewed back on. Irony, maybe, that it was lust in return of pain. Or the other way around.

He stood next to the bench, shoulders hunched against the cool wind of the park, but his companion didn't really seem to mind the cold. Or if he did, he wasn't begging after the long trench coat, which was unusual. Not even looking at him, which was also unusual. Expected, but unusual – he really wished he could see those eyes, even if they would be sparked in anger and hurt. As long as there were no tears, no looming wrench of pain … he wanted to see them.

"Why would you do that? Why now?"

His head wasn't spinning anymore, but he could feel the bruises on his lips from the strange, forceful kisses of need. He didn't know why, exactly. Why he had downed the alcohol, despite knowing what it would do. Why he had fallen to bold advances he would normally turn away. Why his body had twisted the way it did, felt the way it did. Why he hadn't listened to himself.

His head wasn't spinning, but the anger of no source from earlier surged once more as the small body beside him began to shake – shivers he knew weren't from the cold. Light pink locks dimmed red from the low light blew lightly in the wind, twisting in a dance of bitterness he understood all too well, and the body shook more. His lover, small and slim and soft compared to the hard, rough, tall body that had accompanied him home earlier.

Beautiful. He still disliked the word, but there was truly no other way to define the younger man.

"Yuki."

He hated that name. Years of running, but it still followed him.

"Please…"

And yet his feet remained planted to the ground.

"Am I not enough for you?"

Damn, but he had forgot something then, and he still did not remember it now. Something that pulled at him, bit him, screamed in his ear with silent, powerful words. Violet eyes lifted toward him, shimmering and desperate. Hurt. A vicious wrench of pain he hadn't wanted to see. But he couldn't …

"No," he whispered, shaking his head slightly as his own amber eyes narrowed. "No. You're not." Forgotten. Forgotten it all. A tear slipped from a jeweled eye, and they turned away.

"I see."

* * *

**Let me know what you're thinking. Or I'll try to read your miiiiiiiiiinds. O.o**

**Thanks! :)**


	3. Regret

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation. Maki Murakami does.**_

**A/N: 7 trojans and 14 cases of malware on my computer. 438 errors? Ugh. Virus protection. Gr.**

**Rating: T for implications, content, and language.**

* * *

**We All Regret**

Not enough, but perhaps too much. Too much of a good thing that did not come with enough oxygen to sustain it, a sin that slowly killed. A delicious sin with a sugary taste that danced along the tongue of a diabetic, poisoning with gentle, sweet, tender kisses that proclaimed promises that would not be kept. Promises that would be forgotten in even the slightest, quickest moment of weakness. Dawn had broken, his temporary companion long gone unsatisfied from his side, and here he stood. Not there, where he should be, but here, in a midst of something he could never have, but something he had been given without payment. A gift.

Alcohol did crazy things to the brain, but it was the brain that controlled the body, and the soul that controlled the brain. What had been forgotten, Eiri remembered now. Remembered in a flare of searing fire that tickled his chest and burned his throat. A flare of fire that could not be doused by any drink or fed by any fuel not his own.

Here he stood, in the early rays of the morning, against the same bench he had stood beside last night. Decorated by light, enveloped by warmth, but still as cold as he had been before. Not dressed for the chill, not dressed for anything at all, amber eyes bloodshot with lack of sleep and a feeling he remembered all too well. A bitterness he loathed and loved and one that would not leave him alone.

Not enough, not enough. Shuichi Shindou would never be enough for him, no matter how hard he tried. No matter how hard they both tried.

But he was too much. Too much of something wonderful Eiri did not deserve, that he did not want. Nothing pure should be in his life, when all he did was hurt it. Wreck it.

Destroy it.

_("I see.")_

"Do you?" He wondered aloud, pale fingertips tinged blue skimming over the smooth wood of the bench. "Do you really, Shuichi? Can you?"

Violet eyes so dead, a slim form so defeated. His fingers snatched back as a cringe crossed his flawless features.

Joggers raced by in little clothing, trying to outrun the heat that chased them, but Eiri simply pulled his coat tighter around himself, watching them with no expression. His body ached, but the bench remained empty.

Not enough. He wasn't enough.

_("I see.")_

"How can you?"

* * *

**I don't know how long this is going to be, but this part is more than 2 away from the end. Maybe … six parts. Or seven. Epilogue pending. Or something. Huh. **

**Anyway, let me know what you thought. :)**


	4. Die

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation. Maki Murakami does.**_

**Notes: Different from the last 3 or so.**

**Rating: M for mentions of dark thoughts and light sexual references**

* * *

**We All Die**

A twisted sense of existence, wrapped around poisonous past and stale oxygen, trapped within bars that didn't really exist but which were still more confining than the strongest of man-made metals. Life not so vibrant, chilled beneath the thinnest layer of warmth, a layer one weighed down by sins had no hope of walking on. But he liked to imagine that, when he lay in bed late at night, a satisfied lover slumbering by his side, that he could reach up and graze his temptations with the most phantom of touches.

He could die tonight. Any moment. Any second. Maybe not even tonight.

Eiri did not find comfort in contemplating his death, but rather greeted a cold impatience. For years he had called for the Angel to come and take him from the Hell he found himself. But nothing had come to spare him, to take him away. And he grew bitter, so bitter that when that child had stumbled into his life under the street lamp, with words of innocence and hair that glowed like a halo under the glow…

His apartment was dark, inundated with a chill that had lived in his shadow for three days. Three days, and he had not moved from his location for longer than a few minutes. Pressed against the thick, unrelenting glass of his windows, dulled eyes of haunted gold staring … but not really. Waiting for what he knew was not coming, perhaps. Perhaps waiting, perhaps he knew. Knew what, knew…

His cigarettes were somewhere else, and he wanted one with a desperation of want for something else.

A cigarette, slim and cool and pleasing within the grasp of his fingers. A lithe body, trusting and solid and pleasant grasped within his hands. The cigarette, bitter and murderous, calmed him. The lover, naïve and wanton, soothed the demon long integrated with his soul.

_("Yuki?")_

Paint peeled from his wall, a wall that had hidden him, but hadn't. Dotted, under close inspection, with the crimson that had poured from his hands at the act.

_("Yuki?")_

He could die tonight, and when he thought of it now, as with the past two nights, there was not the familiar feeling of impatience. Just a cold, empty reminder. Reminder, reminding, reminding.

'_I won't apologize for what I've done,' _he thought firmly, as he had before. _'I won't.'_

_("Why?")_

There was a bottle at his feet, gleaming and understanding. Begging, maybe a little too hard, too desperate, because it wouldn't –

"Fucking _go away_."

On the floor, at his feet, abused and shattered and leaking its contents with a permanent, senseful reminder of its existence.

Like the pink stuffed rabbit still sitting on thei- his bed.

Damn it.

He could die tonight.

Screw the world and what they thought of tradition and rules and what was expected for those who felt their life was about to end. Put your affairs in order – he would leave the mess for Touma. Apologize for your sins – he had nothing to apologize for. Give what you have – but what had been given to him? Speak the truth, or take it with you to the grave.

_("Am I not enough?")_

What would one say, on their last night alive?

He could die tonight. It was a very real possibility. And a very real impossibility.

_("I love you, Yuki!")_

His hands ached, burned, as though the alcohol on the floor had been spilled on them, instead. Hands that ached the ghost over unnatural rose-colored locks, graze over cheekbones, down a smooth neck and over a flawless but flawed body.

"I've pushed you away, finally." His breath fogged the glass with its repeated mantra; this window knew all of his secrets, his regrets. "Hurt you." Betrayal. Betrayal, a deadly sin. Its mere existence in the world set fire to his skin.

He could die tonight. One push on the window would open it.

_("Am I not enough?")_

He missed the feel of being alive. Fingers danced along the window, pressing against the mist his breath had made, writing words intelligible, but important. Pushed it open. Leaned out, allowing the cool chill of night to assault him.

_("Am I not enough for you?")_

Golden eyes opened, dull as always, and eyed the ground below.

"_Shuichi_."

* * *

**Let me know what you thought, please? (:**


	5. Need

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation. Maki Murakami does.**_

**A/N: I was sicker than sick last week, and I wrote this after having a dream from the medicine I was on. So it's ... trippy. Don't laugh.**

**Rating: M for language, past violence of various descriptive levels.**

* * *

**We All Need**

He had moved beyond the thought that he is dead. Surrounded by pink and white and an odd sense of Sakura blooming in the off-season … A purple hippo ambled by him steadily, turning its massive head to stare at him with slanted yellow eyes as it did. No, he didn't think he was dead at all.

He knew he was.

**Why do you have to be dead? **Something questioned.

Why? Because nothing had felt this wonderful in a long time. His lungs aren't screaming with every breath that he takes – whether in pain or with the absolute desire to _sob_ – and there was no faint taste of metallic blood slithering underneath his tongue. His skin didn't sensitively tinge at the brush of the ground – and the ground was neither soft nor hard. The dark shadows that bathed his body in constant chill … he didn't feel them anymore, but rather a gentle, almost soothing _glow_ of warmth. For the first time that he could remember, the world didn't seem so heavy.

**And you have to be dead for all of that?**

'_I did throw myself out of my window, incase you have forgotten.' _He didn't even snarl the words, though his first reaction to the question was to be sarcastic. Another chalk up on being dead.

**I personally think you're a little obsessed with the dead thing. I mean, it could just be me, but I don't think anyone would **_**fixate**_** on it as much as you are right now. If you think you're dead, you're supposed to go 'Oh, guess I'm dead. Now what?'. Not list all of the reasons you think you are.**

But why would he deserve anything else? After all of the pain and sin he had brought simply by existing … anything and everyone would be much better off without him.

**That's a very conceited way to view things, Eiri.**

A green cow popped out from the branches of the blooming Sakura tree, and it suddenly occurred to Eiri that he hadn't even thought to question the source of this voice, a voice obviously not his. And he had answered its damned questions so easily.

**Not all of them. You still haven't told me why it is you have to be dead to feel the way you do now. **

He didn't have to answer it. It wasn't his voice, he didn't know who it belonged to. And he was dead – he didn't have to do anything he didn't want to now. Nothing.

**No, you're absolutely right. You don't have to answer me. But I'm not going anywhere until you do, and according to you, that's … forever. So…**

Fuck.

**I'll let that language slide, this once, but please answer my question. **Something calm and familiar swept across the back of his neck, assuring. **Please.**

"I deserve nothing less." For some reason, he spoke aloud. "I don't deserve life, not after everything I have done. Everyone that I have hurt …"

"I killed a man, with my own hands. Blood covered hands. I trusted him, and shot him. I watched as his eyes went from drunk to alive to dead in just a matter of seconds. I watched the color fade from his cheeks and as his breathing stopped. I snuck out and watched his funeral procession – I watched his mother and father and sister cry over his coffin as they lowered it into the ground. I took the life of a friend – a friend I loved, whose smile used to brighten any room he walked into – to spare myself a little bit of pain, and only brought his family more." There was a splash of something warm against his hand. Tears? Could the dead cry?

… **It was in self-defense that you killed Yuki, Eiri. You were a child. You cannot hold yourself responsible for those actions.**

"But I can't forget them, and because of that, I know I committed them. Besides, after that … hurting people became so much easier. I told my father I blamed him for my mother's death, and the first time I cut myself, I shoved my wrist in Mika's face and told her to look at what she did to me. I call Touma at random times during the night and ask him to kill me, and he always says that that hurts him. But that's how it works, I guess. You kill a person, and no other pain seems that extreme – that colossal."

**And yet you said earlier that death was the best thing that ever happened to you.**

It was. Oh God, but it was. A pink toad hopped at his feet, large enough to startle, and he glanced down into its vibrant violet eyes, that almost seemed to implore him to pick it up.

**What about Shuichi, Eiri? What about him?**

Something sharp stabbed at his heart as he continued to stare at the toad. A pain.

**You say nothing could ever bring more pain than death, but think. What you saw in Yuki's eyes after you protected yourself from him … was it anything like what you saw in Shuichi's?**

The look of betrayal, of utter defeat. The life had faded from those eyes too, but to dull, not death. He had gone pale, had slumped over, but he had walked out of that room by his own accord. Still breathing. Had come back, dealt with his afflictions, and left again. Alive. Still breathing.

"It hurts," he muttered, pulling his eyes away from the strange, familiar toad to search for his invisible speaker. "Why does it hurt? There is not supposed to be any pain in death."

**Exactly.**

* * *

**No, he didn't just have some huge epiphany. It's a trip dream -- all it did was give him a ... nudge. No assured happy ending, here.**

**I'll take your thoughts on this one, scared as I am to see them. Please be nice? :)**


	6. Cry

**Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation. Maki Murakami does.**

**A/N: I realized I never finished the story. o.o I'm so sorry!**

**Rating: M for language.**

**

* * *

**

**We All Cry**

A saddened existence, wrapped up in a pretty package with a bow that gleamed silver and sparkled under direct light – light that couldn't be sunlight, because sunlight only deadened and overwhelmed its appearance until it was nothing spectacular at all. Sunlight made it real, made it true – there could be no masks out in the open, and only out in the open was anything so easily seen. So vulnerable, ruined.

He had woken to a feeling of intense pain on the side of his face, on a platform far less comforting than his bed, and had cursed under and above his breath when he realized he was laying on the balcony of the apartment below him, thankfully empty, but still another three stories above the ground he had been aiming for. The sun had been trying to strike him with its rays, as though taunting his failed attempt, and the breeze that had pushed against him as he had stood, warm and suffocating in its cruel contradiction, seemed to chastise the fact that he had attempted it at all.

And though his head was pounding, Eiri threw it back against the wall as he entered his apartment once more, groaning as it connected hard with the wood, though the sound was not from the pain that had come up from it.

He prided himself in being a man with only one regret. He had several moments in his life which he frowned at upon remembering, and moments he would rather not remember at all, but he had only one regret. Only one, now tacked up to two, and hanging on his chest by a nail that had been hammered and buried until those regrets had been covered in the blood that had coated that nail and made it all permanent.

"_Fuck_," he choked, blinking rapidly as his eyes suddenly dried. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

He stumbled away from the wall then, feet sliding over the familiar, tainted carpet before they tripped over his glass companion from the night before. But he ignored the bottle, ignored its contents spilling onto the already ruined floor, and walked with his hand reached straight out. As though he couldn't see – as though he was blind and the entire process was completely foreign to him even as his steps were sure of the well-worn path that lead him to the study.

And stopped.

Shadows lingered in this room, painted into the floor and engraved into the walls and leering down lustfully from the ceiling as they watched him take each and every breath that kept his body alive and his soul away from their hands.

When had it gotten like this?

And he stood like that for a few seconds – minutes – hours, caught in a torrent of purple that wasn't soft and gold that wasn't his. Stood, but didn't – his body moving though his mind did not. One hand found a loose sheet of neglected paper, another a pencil that had collected more dust than the abandoned home of the deceased. And he wrote, though all he could see was shadows and colors, his chest burning with foreign decay as his body still groaned in the agony of last night's abuse.

Nothing enough to stop the words from slipping through his fingers, scratching bloodless wounds and endless promises, as a tear of neither only pain or torment fell to dance with the words. It had _always_ been like this.

One tear become more, and like a child, he sunk to his knees, body shaking as he sobbed in the company of shadows.

* * *

**No need to review this one – just go ahead to the next chapter. (:**


	7. End

**Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation. Maki Murakami does.**

**A/N: Last installment on this from me. And it's even in 1****st****-person. ;)**

**Rating: M for language.**

**

* * *

**

**We All**

I stand outside the door of peeling green paint, my hands tucked into the pockets of my jeans and damned if I have any intention to withdraw them and knock on that door. Over the course of one mistake I hadn't acknowledged as a mistake at the time of its birth, I was seeing this door for the first time. And that in of itself is enough to make me pause, for my eyes to squint to near non-sight and take in every last decaying detail of the man-made obstacle that separates me from what I had come here seeking.

Yeah. I am well-aware of the poetic symbolism of my fucked up life.

The note I wrote is in my hands, and even though it's three days old – even though I am the one who wrote its words – I still have a difficult time believing what it says. Because I don't think it says anything … anything that makes sense. Just a jumbled bunch of half-truths and hidden lies and probably more than a few heart-felt confessions I'm not ready to expose just yet. But even after the Tylenol and the Ibuprofen and a few sips of beer that have served as my diet for the past three days … I still haven't put the fucking thing down. And I'm here with every intention of throwing it in its target's face and taking off. Like the coward I apparently am.

I've never been to his apartment before. He's lived inside of mine, shared almost every aspect of my life since then, and knows more about me than I comfortable with, but I had to ask Touma Seguchi, his boss, where his fucking apartment was. Even though I know he's told me countless times how to get there, described the foundation with a writer's eye, and practically handed me his neighbor's security codes. I had to ask.

A sharp jolt across my skull reminds me of the gash on the side of my head, and on reflex to the pain no drug seems willing to take away, I reach up to massage my forehead. And hit his door at the same time. Hard, as all accidental hits usually are.

_Shit_.

There's no cry of welcome in response – no assurance that the knock was heard. Maybe he isn't home. Maybe he's off with that band and they're at the studio or at a radio interview or hell, on tour. And maybe I can just leave the letter on the clip on his door and be gone. Back to New York, if I can. Far away, and he can go off with that friend of his, or that other flamboyant idiot and I really don't think I like that idea.

And then the door creaks open, and I'm greeted with familiar amethyst eyes that go from wide to slanted with anger and distrust that I've only seen one time before.

"Yuki?" Even his voice is raspier than I remember.

And I can only stare at him. I'm not a romantic – I don't believe in deep, soul-searing kisses that make your foot pop or touches that leave you faint just because it has been ages since you have seen your lover. But I can't take my eyes away from him, noticing the differences and the familiarities and the way his chin as his breath catches in disbelief.

"Yuki?" He prods again, and leans out a bit. My head throbs. I step back, and the letter falls to the ground.

I hate him with every fucking inch of my soul. And I try to convey this thought with my eyes even as my mouth forms different words that make him shrink back with wide eyes.

"You're too much."

It hurts us both.

**End**

**

* * *

**

**I … couldn't decide between a bittersweet ending or happy ending. So yeah.**

**And now it's finished! If anyone is still even interested in reading it. :) Reviews are loved, reviewers more so. **

**Trying to get back in the swing of writing fanfiction. Wonder what else will come out next. O.o**


End file.
